North Calgarians unhappy with snow response

Erika stark, Calgary Herald12.17.2013

Amanda Meikle stands with her husband Lee Webster, who is known as the 'community tow truck'. Their Calgary community Temple has been hit hard with snow and many of their neighbours rely on them to free them from the snow, in Calgary on December 16, 2013.Christina Ryan
/ Calgary Herald

A five-year resident of the Calgary neighbourhood of Temple, Meikle says huge snowfalls are common in the northeast community.

But after two weeks of blizzards, she’s fed up with the snow and how the city is handling it.

“This snowfall has been the worst that we’ve had so far,” she said. “A lack of response has made it this bad.”

After two large snowstorms buried the city earlier this month, only the main roads and bus routes were cleared, with the rest of the community left to dig itself out.

Meikle and her husband were able to avoid getting stuck in the snow thanks to their truck, and they’ve been trying to help others.

“We’re pulling people out in trucks, pulling people out in cars,” she said.

Another heavy snowfall on Sunday night has renewed questions about the city’s snow and ice control practices.

Ward 5 Councillor Ray Jones said he and Ward 3 Coun. Jim Stevenson received more than 2,000 phone calls and emails about the snow since the first blizzard on Dec. 2.

Jones, whose northeast Ward 5 includes Martindale, said he got stuck twice trying to tour his area Sunday. Martindale and Taradale received several centimetres of snow Sunday night.

“They’ve had little to no removal other than the priority one and twos,” Jones said Monday. “Some of the back roads are really bad.”

Jones wondered if the city should allocate more money and resources to snow removal to deal with the larger snowfalls.

The city has about 450 operations staff working in snow and ice control and about 125 pieces of equipment including graders, snow plows and snow blowers. Mac Logan, the city’s general manager of transportation said crews have been working at full capacity since the first blizzard.

The city also hires out contracted pieces of equipment to deal with larger snowfalls.

Between Dec. 2 and Dec. 13 the city deployed on average 26 extra pieces of contracted equipment per day to tackle the snow.

It was more efficient to use contractors during one-time snowfalls, rather than budgeting for them year-round, Logan said.

City council increased the snow and ice control budget by $10 million in 2011. There is also a reserve fund available to deal with severe snow events.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi said the city needed to better manage the plowing of residential streets. Calgary’s current snow removal practices were inflexible, he said.

According to the city’s snow and ice control policy, residential roads that have more than 12 centimetres of snow will be plowed, but only after the priority 1 through 4 roads are completed.

“We have to start working on really impassable areas prior to completing priority two roads across the whole city,” he said.

Logan said the roads department would look back on the last two weeks and to see how to improve the city’s response.

After an in-private council session, Logan pledged to come up later this winter with new strategies for coping with major snowstorms.

The city may take cues from how it responded during the flood.

“We need to learn from this event, do a post-mortem on it and come forward with a plan on how we’ll better respond the next time it happens,” Logan said.

The snowdrifts in the northeast have also caused problems for the city’s waste and recycling services.

Residents of Martindale, Martha’s Haven, Taradale, Taralake, Saddleridge and Saddlelake are being asked to move their black and blue bins to the front curbs for collection on Tuesday if their back lanes are impassable.

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